It certainly wasn’t someone like me.
“It wasn’t just a prank?” I asked.
“He knew what was stolen. He told me about the three IBM Selectrics and the gold watch out of Miranda’s desk.”
“He said that?”
Newgate was watching me. I was used to it. White people like to keep their eyes peeled on blacks, and vice versa. We lie to each other so much that often the only hope is to see some look or gesture that betrays the truth.
“Why do you think that he would put the blame on you, Ezekiel?” Newgate asked, at once wondering and suspicious.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. But I wasn’t feeling honest. I had a long history with the police—and it wasn’t pleasant. The police would have been happy to investigate my activities on the nights of the crimes. They’d also wonder at how I came upon my responsible position at the school.
“You sure that you don’t know anything, Ezekiel?”
“No, Hiram,” I replied. I might as well have slapped him; no one called Principal Newgate by his first name.
His jaw set hard and his hands got restless.
“I just want you to know that I’m here, Rawlins. I’m weighing every piece of information. Every piece,” he said.
“Okay. Let’s call the police right now.”
“What?”
“I said, let’s call the police. That’s what I’d do. When I find out about some crime I call the police. I don’t have anything to hide.” Bluff was all I had left.
The blood was rising under Newgate’s pale skin.
“You’re right, of course. It’s a police matter. I didn’t call you about that anyway,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about Archie Muldoon.”
“What about him?” I asked.
I never liked Muldoon. The white teachers and workmen would often take him to the side and confide in him. He was always coming to me with problems that the white staff seemed more comfortable discussing with him.
A short man and balding, he was in his early fifties but wore a faded White Sox baseball cap that made him seem younger; a trick to fool people into not taking him seriously.
“I think he’s being wasted down there with you scrubbing out toilets and mopping halls,” Newgate was saying. “I mean, I don’t understand how you made Burns the head man when you’ve got an obviously more experienced man like Archie.”
“Being young doesn’t mean you’re not experienced, Mr. Newgate.”
“Anyway,” he said, dismissing my words, “at least you could cut Archie loose and let him come up here to work with me. You know you’re, um, so, uh, busy that you’re sometimes slow reacting to my requests.”
He said more but I stopped listening. I was thinking about how I’d often catch Muldoon staring at me over the coffee-break table, or from across the yard. It was a piercing stare. A white man’s stare that set off an alarm in my southern heart.
Maybe it was Archie who called in blaming me for a thief.
“Mr. Newgate,” I said, interrupting whatever it was that he was saying, “you’re the boss of the school. You call the shots. I mean, if you see a problem you come to me and I’m supposed to take care of it. If I don’t perform to your expectations, then you call the area office to complain—that’s what it says in the rule book. That’s how it works.”
“It would be better if you tried to work with me, Mr. Rawlins,” he said. “I came to this school to straighten things out.”
“Oh? I thought it was because Mrs. Jimenez had a stroke and the three people higher than you on the eligible list didn’t want the job.” I had been a fool with Mrs. Turner and I kept it up with Mr. Newgate.
“Will you let me have Archie?”
“No,” I said.
“I want you to reconsider, Mr. Rawlins.”
“Mr. Muldoon works for me. Any jobs you need done will come through me. Me or Mr. Burns.” It felt good to be standing up for myself. Too good. It’s amazing how ten minutes with a woman can turn you silly.
“This isn’t over,” Newgate said.
“I have to go.”
I left the principal to make my rounds of the plant.
THE SCHOOL, LIKE LOS ANGELES, was a hodgepodge of this and that, old and new. It was once a series of brick buildings at the top of a hill named after President Polk and populated with Irish, Italian, and Jewish kids—all of them working-class or poor. There had been a large empty plot of land down the hill that the school used for a garden. When the population changed, and grew, most of the plot had been paved over. The garden shrank but it was still the size of half a city block. Bungalows were moved in to accommodate the larger student body and the school was renamed. Sojourner Truth; evangelist, suffragette, abolitionist, and—by her own account—a woman who spoke personally with God. By that time the neighborhood was primarily black but there were Mexicans and Asians too. That was still back in the days when all dark people were the same color.
It would have been a fertile ground for a teacher like Miss Truth. But she was dead and her name meant no more to the students, teachers, or parents than did that of President Polk.
MY DAY WENT ON at a natural pace.
A toilet exploded with the help of a quarter stick of dynamite; probably the doing of Brad Parkerhouse, our resident bad boy. Jorge and Simona disappeared for a while but by the time I got to search for them Jorge pretended that he’d been looking for me to ask if we needed to restock the outside johns with toilet paper. There was a pigeon infestation along the gutters of the older buildings and I had to direct the exterminators where it was safe to lay their bait.
Every now and then Idabell crossed my mind. I wondered who might have blamed me for stealing from the school. But mostly I went about my job like half a million other working men and women in the L.A. basin.
There’s a routine wherever you find people; even in a condemned man’s cell. I missed lunch but made it back to the main office by one-thirty to make sure that my people had finished their midday break and were off at work.
EttaMae was the only one there.
“Hi, Easy,” she said.
“You not mad anymore, Etta?”
“I wasn’t mad in the first place. Maybe disgusted. Maybe I was worried about you jeopardizin’ your job. But I wasn’t mad.”
“Okay. What you doin’ still here?”
“It’s Raymond. I got to go get him.”
I could live to a hundred and still the mention of that name would send a chill down my spine.
“He sick?”
“Naw. The other car broke down an’ he cain’t get in here.”
“He stuck out there at the house?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. You mind if I go get him?”
“Yeah, I mind. You go back to work, Etta. I’ll go an’ get Mouse.”
Etta smiled. “You always did look after Raymond,” she said.
CHAPTER 4
IT FELT GOOD to be headed down toward Compton. Etta Mae lived there with her son, LaMarque, and, sometimes, with his father—Raymond “Mouse” Alexander.
They were together again in the early sixties. Mouse had a change of heart there for a while and wanted to be a family man, a married man.
The change came about late in ’61. Sweet William Dokes had moved to L.A. from Jenkins, Texas. Sweet William was a barber and a guitar player, somewhere in his sixties. He was a dapper man who had taught Mouse everything about good dress and conduct with the ladies.
Mouse took his own slant on what William had to say and left broken hearts, broken heads, and more dead bodies than anyone knew throughout Texas and southern California.
Mouse was an old-time gangster. A tough who could work with you or go it alone. He wasn’t afraid of prison or death, and that made him the kind of man that people left alone. Even the police didn’t come after Raymond unless they were sure they had something on him.
The first man he killed was his stepfather, daddyReese Corn. Some years later he killed his stepbrother, Navrochet,
in a back-alley duel.
Over the years many of my friends have asked me how I could be close with a man like Mouse. A man who was a cold-blooded killer.
I never tried to explain. How could I? In the hard life of the streets you needed somebody like Mouse at your back. I didn’t have a mother or father, or close family or church. All I had was my friends. And among them Mouse packed the largest caliber and the hardest of rock-hard wills.
WHEN SWEET WILLIAM came to town he and Mouse took to the streets together. They plied the pool halls and whore-houses; they gambled and drank deep. William always had his blues guitar with him and because of that they were welcome in almost every door.
People commented on how much they resembled each other. Both had slight builds and long-fingered hands. You would have sworn that they were related and not just good friends.
Raymond treated William like a father and a friend. They lived together and shared the same women. For six months William and Mouse were joined at the hip. And wherever they showed up there was a party going on.
I hadn’t seen much of them because I was sick for a while and then I went to work at the school. Mouse and William didn’t wake up until the afternoon; by the time they were out on the town I was already in my bed.
So I was a little surprised one day when I got home to find Raymond with my adopted children, Jesus and Feather. Mouse sat solemnly in my favorite sofa chair while Feather offered him a glass of green Kool-Aid. Jesus was sitting at the dining table doing his homework. He was a freshman in high school and, even though he could talk by then, Jesus was still a very quiet boy.
“Raymond, what you doin’ here?” I asked.
“Let’s take a ride, Easy,” he said. He stood up, ignoring the glass that five-year-old Feather proffered. Like all females she was in love with him.
“Okay,” I said. I could see that he meant business.
“Don’t you want your Kool-Aid, Uncle Raymond?” Feather asked.
I knelt down and kissed my little girl’s light brown face. “Put it in the icebox till he comes back, baby,” I said. “We got to talk about something right now.”
We went out to my Pontiac and we drove off. I took a southeastern route because, like I said, that was the 1960s and black men couldn’t take a leisurely drive in white Los Angeles without having the cops wanting to know what was going on.
“It’s all ’cause’a my dick, Easy,” Mouse said.
It worried me to hear his words because they indicated that Mouse had been thinking—he was always his deadliest when circumstances forced him to use his mind.
“What’s that, Raymond?”
“You know I got me a big dick,” Mouse answered. “That’s a fact. I don’t know what the girls think about it but you know I like it just fine.”
I was impatient but with Raymond you had to let the story unwind. He couldn’t be rushed, so I concentrated on the white line.
“I mean, sometime it might be saggin’ a little but I could always get the mothahfuckah hard.” He slapped his steely finger against the dashboard. “You know Tisha?”
“Lawrence?”
“Naw, Burnett. Live over in the Russell projects.”
“I don’t think so.”
“She work for John, waitress over there. Sour-faced bitch, but she fine, an’ she know it too.”
“What about her?”
“I’ont know, Easy. I’ont know what happened. We was drinkin’ red wine. Maybe that’s it. But my dick was hangin’ down just like a goddam water hose. An’ you know Tisha didn’t like that at all. She say I’m a faggot and a punk. She said to get outta her house ’cause she need a man who could get hard for her.”
“An’ what you do?” I asked. I asked because he was my friend—but I really didn’t want to know.
“I went down to my house and started drinkin’. I was mad. Mad at my own goddam dick. When I got up it was early in the mornin’, ’bout four. I don’t know what got into me, Easy. I started talkin’ to myself like I was crazy. Talkin’ ’bout Tisha. And the more I talk the madder I get. Before you know it I’m out in my car headed for the projects.”
We were driving down Hauser. It was a sunny day, I remember. But the shadows seemed darker than usual. The people, out in front of their houses, looked grim.
“I pult up in front’a the projects; I was gonna get that bitch out the bed. You cain’t talk to me like that an’ get away wit’ it. Shit. For all I knew she got on the phone after I was gone an’ told ev’rybody.” Mouse stopped and stared angrily out at the street.
When we pulled up to a red light I turned and asked, “What did you do?”
“William was comin’ outta the courtyard when I drove up. He was walkin’ across the street to his car but when he see me he smile an’ grab on his thing. ‘Hey, Raymond,’ he say. ‘You sure right, man. That Tisha’s like satin.’ Like satin.”
The car behind us honked and I looked up to see that the light was green. I drove across the street and parked at the curb. I couldn’t stand the tension of driving and listening to that story at the same time.
“I didn’t mean to hit him,” Raymond said. “You know that woman didn’t mean a damn thing t’me. When William hit the ground I knew I was wrong. I was gonna say I was sorry. I was gonna buy him a drink—but he went for his gun, Easy. I swear he did.”
No more had to be said. I knew that Sweet William Dokes’s corpse was laid out on a slab somewhere.
“Cops picked me up at the house an’ took me down to jail this mornin’, but they didn’t give a fuck. They knew we’d been runnin’ together. One of ’em hit me a couple’a times an’ when I didn’t break down they let me go.”
Raymond was crying. Not blubbering or shaking, but there were real tears in his eyes. I had never seen him even sad over anything he’d done. Seeing him cry brought tears uncontrollably to my own eyes.
I didn’t know what to say.
Maybe just sitting there is what changed him. Maybe being in my company, coming from my house, he got the idea to go straight.
We sat there at the curb until sunset. The skies turned a black-tinged orange. We sat silently. I was thinking that my new life as a workingman was a good idea.
As it turned out Mouse was thinking the same thing.
When the streetlamps came on I drove us back to my house. Mouse didn’t come in. He got in his car and drove out to EttaMae, his ex-wife and soon-to-be-wife-again.
Etta called me the next day. She wanted jobs for both her and Raymond at the Board of Education. It was easy to get her in. She was a hard worker and had a clean work record.
The only job Raymond had ever held was making license plates at the state prison at Chino while doing five years for manslaughter.
But I was good at making things happen. I got Raymond a job as janitor under my supervision. And, so far, he did it just fine.
SOUTHEAST L.A. was palm trees and poverty; neat little lawns tended by the descendants of ex-slaves and massacred Indians. It was beautiful and wild; a place that was almost a nation, populated by lost peoples that were never talked about in the newspapers or seen on the TV. You might have read about freedom marchers; you might have heard about a botched liquor store robbery (if a white man was injured)—but you never heard about Tommy Jones growing the biggest roses in the world or how Fiona Roberts saved her neighbor by facing off three armed men with only the spirit of her God to guide her.
Etta lived in a small house that was by itself on a large lot. She had fruit trees and a large garden. There was a tan Ford parked on the lawn.
Raymond Alexander, wearing a soft gray work shirt and matching pants, was looking under the hood. He didn’t get down in it but merely looked from a safe distance. Mouse might have changed but he wasn’t ever going to get dirty if he didn’t have to.
“Mouse,” I said from my open window.
“I think it’s the generator, man. Battery spark just fine,” he said, not even looking in my direction.
“Jump
in,” I told him. “I’ll take you to work.”
WE TOOK THE LONG WAY BACK. I stopped by my Magnolia Street apartment building, and a smaller place I owned on Denker. I was still in the real estate business in a small way. But I no longer dreamed of making a fortune on speculation.
We didn’t even get out of the car. I just wanted to see the places.
Raymond sat next to me, quiet and thoughtful. He drew his right knee up to his chin and smoked a Chesterfield. He reminded me of a man sitting in a solitary cell. There was nothing to complain about because there was no one who could hear him.
“You ever go to church, Easy?” Mouse asked when we were about a mile from Sojourner Truth.
“I been in one or two, even on a Sunday sometimes, but I don’t think you could say that I ever properly went to church, not since I’ve been a man.”
“Oh. Uh-huh.”
“You thinkin’a goin’ to church, Ray?”
“I don’t know.”
That was a long talk for us at the time.
CHAPTER 5
THERE WERE AT LEAST SIXTEEN police cars parked around the entrance gate of the new school yard. As I approached the external parking lot a uniformed cop stepped out and put up his hand to stop me.
“You’ll have to turn around,” the young white cop told me.
“What happened here?”
“You’ll have to turn around now.” There was no give in his voice.
“I’m the head custodian at the school, officer,” I said. “Mr. Rawlins.”
“You have keys to the buildings in the garden?”
“Yes I do.”
“Then pull around here. Go up to the garden gate and ask for Sergeant Sanchez.”
I turned to Raymond and said, “You better head over to the main office.”
“Huh?” Mouse seemed unaware of the police activity around us.
“Go on and get ready to start your shift.” I didn’t want Raymond to be anywhere around the cops if a serious crime had been committed. Ex-convicts make the best suspects.
“Okay, man,” Raymond said. He got out of the car and made his way slowly across the asphalt yard. Mouse might have changed, but he certainly wasn’t what anybody would call normal. I don’t think you would have gotten a rise out of him if the Russians dropped the bomb on New York City.
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